


All Creatures Grim and Grotesque

by Ember_Keelty



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-30
Updated: 2012-11-30
Packaged: 2017-11-19 21:39:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/577925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ember_Keelty/pseuds/Ember_Keelty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose takes in a wounded baby Fluthulu. Kanaya is politely appalled.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Creatures Grim and Grotesque

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dagas isa (dagas_isa)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dagas_isa/gifts).



> This fic was written for the Femslash Multifandom Ficathon 2012 on livejournal and dreamwidth. Snooping through my recipient's journal, I found a post called "Top Five Fic Cliches" that included a mention of "Character X gets a puppy/kitty/rabbit/duckling/baby cthulhu." That last one may have been a joke, but now it isn't.

            Kanaya was lounging on a brightly-colored rug, enjoying an almost entirely tasteful novel and a lovely china cup of something that technically counted as tea, when Rose Lalonde insinuated herself in the doorway.  "Kanaya," she said, "could I borrow you for a moment?  I require your assistance in an urgent matter."

            "An urgent matter pertaining to our ultimate triumph over the game and, in fact, our very survival?" Kanaya asked.  "Or to your personal satisfaction?"

            "Would it make a difference either way to whether or not you'll come with me?" Rose countered with a playful smirk.

            "As much as I enjoy playing coy with you, I suspect that if I implied that it would, you would smugly reveal that your precognition of conditions required for success informs you otherwise.  That kind of thing is getting old, Rose."  She set down her book and, shaking off the languor of literary immersion, pushed herself onto her knees.  Rose stepped forward to offer her a hand up to her feet, incidentally revealing that in her other hand she carried a large and somewhat ominous looking black bag.  That, Kanaya decided, did not bode particularly well for the potential that this was all leading up to her getting to make out with her girlfriend, but hope springs eternal.

            Rose led her through what was by now an only _mundanely_ labyrinthine series of hallways, staircases, and transportalizers, and out onto an exterior ledge of what it occurred to Kanaya might be called the bow of the meteor, if meteors were the same thing as boats and that did not sound ridiculous.  The human girl took a seat with her back pressed against the rocky gray wall, and motioned for Kanaya to do the same.

            "Okay," Kanaya said, sliding down beside her, "we're here, so what now?"

            "Now we wait for the crisis to strike, so that we can avert it.  It shouldn't take long."  Rose opened her bag and fished from it an oversized needle and syringe filled with black liquid, which she held at the ready, as well as a handheld sewing machine that appeared to have been alchemically combined with something untoward.  It reminded Kanaya unpleasantly of the Thorns of Oglogoth, but she nevertheless took it when Rose offered it to her.  "It wouldn't be fair not to warn you that this will be a bit messy and not particularly pleasant.  But I trust you above anyone to help me with what needs be done here."  She smiled warmly, which was probably an attempt at reassurance, but Kanaya found it kind of unsettlingly dissonant when she also appeared poised to stab something.

            "Well," said Kanaya, "the implements you've brought with you are a little worrying, not to mention baffling.  But I suppose whatever this is can't be too harrowing if it's something we can deal with sitting down."

            Rose's smile instantly froze into a grimace.  "Unfortunately, we're only sitting so that we won't fall and hurt ourselves when we're both partially paralyzed in a few seconds."

            "When we're both partially _what_?"

            Before Kanaya could press any further, they were interrupted by a high, grating whine.  It started soft enough to be mistaken for an exceptionally bad case of tinnitus, but soon it was so overpowering that a thousand malfunctioning troll or human ears combined could not have produced such a ringing.  Kanaya's hands began to spasm and seize.  She pressed them into her lap to avoid dropping the device Rose had given her, while Rose, face twitching, gripped her needle with resolve and cadaver-like stiffness.

            Something large and chalky white slammed into the wall above their heads and fell into their laps.  The whining became screaming.  Kanaya could feel warm blood seeping into her clothes and smell it in the air.  She tried to push the _thing_ off of her, but her arms would not move how she told them.  None of her body would.

            It was almost like the time she'd died.  Suddenly, the memory seemed so close she could almost feel the pain in her abdomen.  He was standing just over her, and her lipstick was right there.  All she had to do was flick her wrist and she could cut clean through his legs, but her arms were dead already, stiff and cold and heavy at her sides.  Judging from the reek of blood and the way her vision clouded over, the rest of her was following fast.  _Fucking unconscionable_ , to kill your friends, he'd said.  Had she been his friend or not?  She had never much cared for him, and she doubted he was overly fond of her either.  Still, they had fought side by side on the Battlefield and triumphed together against overwhelming odds.  Didn't that count for anything at all?

            "Kanaya!  Kanaya, please, I need your help!"  The screaming had stopped.  Kanaya only realized that when she realized she could hear Rose's voice at all.  The human had successfully plunged her needle into the creature's rubbery flesh, which presumably had something to do with it having gone so still and silent.  "I can only buy us so much time this way!"  The liquid in the syringe bubbled and slowly drained.

            Kanaya took a few deep, measured breaths, focused on Rose's nearness, and did her best to force back down the anger and hurt that had so inexplicably bubbled up.  "What do you need me to do?"

            "Stitch him up!"

            Kanaya looked down at the mess of inky blue blood and wetly shining organs oozing out from the jagged tears in the thing's pale skin.  "Oh God damn it.  Rose, I am a tailor, not a doctor!"

            "That's close enough for our purposes.  The denizens of the Furthest Ring aren't exactly delicate.  In case you missed it, this one just survived a collision at near light speed.  Or rather, he _will_ survive it, _if_ you patch him up quickly."

            Swearing quietly, with hands still a bit numb and less responsive than would be ideal, Kanaya did her best to shove the displaced viscera back in where it was supposed to go.  Sparks of a sort of anti-fire that seemed to absorb light and heat rather than emit it crackled around the eldritch sewing machine as she used it to close the wounds.  When she finished, Rose discharged the last milliliters of tranquilizer into the creature and gently rolled it off of their legs.

            It looked, Kanaya thought, a bit like one of the cuttlefish Feferi used to keep, except that it was more than six feet long and had about five times as many tentacles, as well as a single cantaloupe-sized eye in the center of its mantle.  Right now, that eye was half-lidded and those tentacles swayed drunkenly.  Occasionally, the creature would emit a small grumble that made Kanaya's fingers twitch slightly.

            "Rose," Kanaya said in a voice brimming with carefully cultivated patience, "this is a larval horrorterror, isn't it?"

            "More or less," said Rose.  "Well, less, to be precise.  I doubt he will ever grow to the ranks of even the smaller gods.  More likely, he's a being on the same order as Fluthulu.  Even so, the cries made in his death throes would be enough to send everyone on the meteor into pulmonary arrest."

            "Oh.  Well, crisis averted, I suppose.  Can we throw it back into the abyss now?"

            "Not yet.  He seems to have been separated from what for lack of a better word we will call his family.  By the time we hit him, he was already weakened from hunger.  It'll take a couple months for him to regain enough strength to make his way back home."

            "Okay, but at least it's not bleeding to death now, correct?  If we jettison it, shouldn't we be out of range by the time it starves?"

            Rose looked surprised and a little bit hurt.  It was not an expression that Kanaya was accustomed to seeing on her, and not one that she particularly wanted to see again.  "Really, Kanaya?  I understand that you prefer the warmth and light of Skaia to the company of my betentacled associates, but don't you think that's just a little bit... cold?  He's only a baby, after all."  She stroked its mantle absent-mindedly, almost reflexively, and it twined a frond around her arm as though in reciprocation.

            Kanaya sighed.  "Just so you are aware, it makes me a little uncomfortable when you refer to them as your 'associates'.  Also, I have yet to fully wrap my head around humans' especial empathy for larvae.  But if it means that much to you, I will do what I can to assist you in its rehabilitation."

            "Thank you, Kanaya."  Rose was visibly relieved.  "I truly appreciate it.  Let's start by moving him inside."

            The little monstrosity was just heavy enough to be extremely cumbersome for even the two of them together to lift and carry.  Rose quite graciously allowed Kanaya to take the head and herself dealt with the tentacles.  Happily, they managed to find a little-used room to stash it in without running into any of the meteor's other inhabitants on the way.  After setting it down, Kanaya regarded it warily.  It stared back at her with one unnervingly large and intelligent pale azure eye.  "Does it have a name?" she asked.

            "I don't think he would have earned one at this age," Rose said.  "Though we could always give him a temporary one.  What would you like to call him?"

            "I would like," Kanaya said, thoughtfully toying with the lipstick in her skirt pocket, "to call him Sashimi."

            "Sashimi it is," said Rose, smiling.

            Sashimi gave a weak but amiable chirrup at them, and Kanaya almost felt bad.

            "If you'll excuse us," said Rose, "I think I ought to feed him now."

            "Excuse you?  What exactly does it eat?"

            "Do you really want to know?"

            "Your tone just now when you asked that makes me suspect that I do not."

            "I will see you later then, Kanaya.  Thank you for all of your help today."

            Even though she said that, curiosity still got the better of Kanaya once she had exited the room.  She listened at the closed door, expecting to hear some grotesquely loud crunching or slurping, but there was only silence.

–

            Sashimi required feeding only once a day, but Rose seemed to spend a considerable amount of time in his room even aside from that.  Sometimes she poked and prodded him with various scientific implements, sometimes she took photographs or video recordings, and sometimes she collected blood and tissue samples "for further research".  Most often, though, her visits were for something she called "behavioral enrichment," which, as far as Kanaya could tell, meant tossing some hapless inanimate object to Sashimi, watching him destroy it thoroughly and in incredibly disconcerting ways, and then cleaning up the wide-flung and usually somewhat slimy mess that resulted.

            One day a few weeks into the whole ordeal, Kanaya walked in to find Rose fondly observing Sashimi slowly rip the stuffing out of an oversized teddy bear, which he had impaled through the abdomen with his tentacles.

            "Hello, Kanaya," Rose greeted her with good cheer.  "Would you care to have a seat and chat with me for a while?  Or was there something in particular you wanted?"

            "Hm."  Kanaya looked at the floor.  "There was a particular reason I came here, yes, but it isn't a matter of any real urgency, and if you would like some company in your... whatever it is you call what you are doing right now, I would be happy to postpone my pursuance of that aim in order to sit with you for any length of time you consider to be—"

            "It's my turn for bleeder duty again, isn't it?" Rose interrupted her.  Kanaya could only blush in response.  "Really, Kanaya, there's no need to be so self-conscious about that."

            "I apologize for rambling, but I think there sort of is a need.  My role on this trip so far has primarily been that of a parasite, both literal and figurative, and I am not really okay with that."

            "I don't consider you a figurative parasite at all."

            "That is always a relief to hear, but I am nonetheless literally draining your blood on a full lunar orbital basis."

            "Kanaya, please.  I thought we agreed we weren't going to do this."

            "Do what?"

            Rose arched her back as though in a partial swoon and pressed her wrist to her forehead.  "Oh Rose, Can't You Understand That I Am A Dangerous And Soulless Monster?  I Am Nothing But A Burden To Those I Love And You Mustn't Try To See Me Anymore.  This Is The Skin Of A Killer, Rose."

            "Okay, I know that is your way of trying to be helpful, and honestly it is sort of amusing, but that is not actually a fair representation of the issue I'm having.  I would feel just fine about being a blood-sucking creature of the day if I weren't also plagued by doubt as to my ability to contribute anything meaningful in recompense."

            Rose opened her mouth to answer, but their conversation was interrupted by a triumphant, squelching burble as Sashimi somehow managed to cause the teddy bear's head to pop clear off its body and rocket into the air, raining down a trail of cottony viscera as it went.  Rose applauded politely and gestured for Kanaya to do the same.

            "I'm sorry, Rose, but I still don't like that thing," said Kanaya.

            "You don't have to apologize to me for that."  Rose looked ever so mildly disappointed, but not particularly surprised.  "Though, if you don't mind talking about it, I would be interested in understanding a little more specifically why."

            "Oh, I don't know.  It could have something to do with the untimely extinction of my race caused by one of his kind; the uncertainty and acute worry about the circumstances of your future — or lack thereof — created by others; the temporary deprivation of the function of all of my limbs and, from what you told me, near asphyxiation of practically everyone I know who is not yet dead; the reaching into my mind to extract some of my worst memories and replay them for me..."

            "Wait, what?  What was that last one?"

            "Reaching into my mind," Kanaya repeated, slowly and forcefully.  "Extracting some of my worst memories.  And replaying them for me."

            Rose chewed her lip pensively.  "I really don't think he can do that."

            "Didn't it happen to you when we first encountered him?"

            "No, it didn't.  It happened to you?"

            "Yes!  When I smelled all that blood, and felt it on me, and my body became unresponsive to the commands my brain was issuing it, for a moment, it was like I was being murdered."  She paused to think over what she had just said, and clarified, "I mean it was like I was being murdered _again_ , the same way and under the same circumstances as the first time."

            Rose stood up, looking concerned.  "Kanaya, that sounds like it might have been traumatic re-experiencing."

            "It was!  Thank you for noticing!"

            "No, I mean that's what it's called — by psychologists, anyhow.  More colloquially, it's known as a flashback, an intrusive memory of a traumatic event.  Has anything like that happened to you before?"

            "Not really."

            "That's good, at least."  Rose reached out to Kanaya and put a hand on one of her shoulders, causing Kanaya to suddenly realize how tense they had gotten.  "And I must say, you handled it extraordinarily well.  Keeping one's head in a crisis and staying focused on the most important task at hand is difficult enough even without such complications."  Rose squeezed her shoulder, gently working her fingertips into all the little knots in the muscles there.  Kanaya smiled gratefully at her and brought up her own hand to stroke the backs of her knuckles.

            It had never been her intention to start an argument; there were just so many little frustrations eating away at her lately, and simply _not_ bleeding earnestness all over Rose like some kind of sincerity hemophiliac was apparently still not a thing she was capable of doing.  She was very fortunate that her human girlfriend did not appear to mind — on the contrary, at times like these, it seemed to Kanaya that she rather appreciated the intimacy and implied trust.  The two girls stood together, with hands not-quite-clasped and in silence charged with potential, for a happy moment that grew steadily longer without sign of ending.  Finally, almost imperceptibly, Rose began to lean in.

            Which was when Sashimi, apparently upset at having lost his audience, chucked the disemboweled corpse of the teddy bear at their heads.

            "Okay," said Kanaya, peeling a scrap of slimy ersatz fur off of her face, "so the memory thing may not have been his fault after all.  But now I have another reason to dislike him, so I suppose it all balances out in the end."

            "Fair enough," Rose told her, shooting a nasty look at Sashimi.  "Why don't we leave him be for now, and go somewhere else?  You look like you could use a drink."

            "That," Kanaya said, "sounds excellent."

–

            Over the next month or so, Kanaya noticed Rose becoming gradually more and more worn out and withdrawn.  She slept long and fitfully, spent more time holed up in her room reading, and even seemed to lose interest in Sashimi, although she still fed him regularly.  Kanaya began to wonder, once again, what exactly she was feeding him.  She never seemed to take anything remotely edible into or out of his room.  It was getting to be a little distressing.

            The boiling-over point came one day when it was Rose's "turn for bleeder duty," as she had rather crudely put it.  Rainbow-drinking from Rose was always an awkward and somewhat uncomfortable affair for both girls, but normally when it was over Kanaya would patch the human girl up and just hold her for the next ten or fifteen minutes.  Kanaya was always a bit drowsy from the meal, and Rose from the minor blood loss, so it was the perfect time to do nothing but sit and cuddle shamelessly.  This time though, as Kanaya was peeling open the band aid, Rose scratched absently at the puncture wound on her neck, then brought her hand away and stared at the blood on it with such a distant and despondent look on her face that Kanaya's heart almost broke just to see it.

            "What in the world has that thing been doing to you?" Kanaya blurted out after applying the bandage.  When Rose didn't respond, not even with a denial, an awful thought occurred to her.  "It is also sanguivorous, isn't it?  Rose, I do not know if dying because you bled yourself dry sustaining the life of a creature it would be _generous_ to call a monster is heroic or just, but it certainly qualifies as at least one of the two!"

            "That's not it," said Rose.  "He doesn't eat blood."

            "Then what, pray tell, _does_ he eat?"

            Rose sighed.  "Dreams.  Or, more specifically, nightmares."

            "But you don't have any nightmares.  No one on this meteor has normal dreams, except perhaps that enigmatic Mayor fellow."

            "I have discovered a workable substitute."

            "What's that?"  Again Rose did not answer, and again Kanaya's mind rushed to fill in the blank with the worst thing possible.  "Wait.  Don't tell me you've been purposely inducing... what did you call them?  Intrusive memories?"

            "It's really not as bad as it sounds," Rose assured her quickly.

            "What the fuck?"  That Kanaya had thought of it in the first place probably should have prepared her somewhat for it to actually be the truth.  It had not.  "Why would you do that to yourself?"

            "Who's to say, really?  Maybe I never fully escaped the thrall of the Horrorterrors after all.  Or maybe I did, physically, but am still bound to them by some twisted sense of gratitude.  Perhaps I feel compelled to perform magnanimous acts because somewhere deep down, I fear a just death."

            "Rose—" Kanaya began, heart and voice overflowing with pity, but Rose cut her off by pressing a finger to her lips.

            "Or maybe," she said, "just maybe, I really, genuinely like him, and I believe he has as much a right to exist as anyone else."

            Kanaya turned her face away to free her mouth.  "That doesn't mean you are obligated to sacrifice anything of your own for him."

            "Obligated, no.  But I'm sentimental that way."  Her lips curled into a teasing smile, and her whole face instantly looked a little less pallid, a little less _bloodless_.  "Sorry to disappoint you; I know how enamored you are of my ice queen persona."

            "All right, but it is starting to take a toll on your mental health, which I think even you will have to admit is not an acceptable casualty, seeing as how you are our leader and chief strategist and we need your mind to be un-addled, not to mention un-devoured-by-hideous-abominations."  Rose began to object, but Kanaya returned her own shushing gesture from a moment ago, perhaps with slightly more force.  "Which is why, for this final week of Sashimi's rehabilitation, I will take up the responsibility of feeding him."

            Rose leaned back just a fraction of an inch, and when she spoke, Kanaya could feel her breath.  "You shouldn't be the one to have to do that.  I know you don't particularly care for him."

            "But I care for you," Kanaya insisted.  "And to be honest, it would be a relief to give something back for all the times you have allowed me to feed off of you."

            "Perhaps you missed the intended subtext of what I just said about sentimentality and the right to continued existence, but I wasn't only referring to Sashimi."

            "No, I caught that.  If anything, it further solidifies my resolve.  We parasites must stick together, or something."

            "Are you absolutely sure about this?  If it makes any difference, I would not be jeopardizing either my own survival or the success of the mission by continuing on as I have been.  Having certain foreknowledge of the ultimate consequences of my actions really has made me a good deal less reckless, as I think you've noticed."

            "That's good, but I was actually lying — and rather transparently, I think — about that being my main concern here.  So yes, I am sure."

            "All right."  Rose pressed a quick kiss to the tip of Kanaya's still-extended finger, instantly throwing all of Kanaya's thoughts into muddled chaos.  "I've learned a thing or two recently about accepting help when it's offered.  If you'd like, I could go with you and wait just outside the door."

            "Yes," said Kanaya, blushing like an algal bloom on an over-fertilized lake.  "That would be... I would like that.  Yes."

–

            Sashimi's massive eye narrowed with something like suspicion when Kanaya entered his room without Rose anywhere in sight.  He rumbled unhappily at her and, when she approached him, squawked in alarm and waved his tentacles about frantically, creating a barrier of erratically moving rubbery bludgeons that prevented her from getting any closer.

            "Stop that," Kanaya told him firmly.  "I'm only here to feed you.  Do you have any idea how much trouble you've caused for Rose, making her take care of you like that?  I'm doing this for her sake."

            The tentacles slowed and gradually settled to the ground — except for one which Sashimi reached out and gingerly pressed to Kanaya's forehead.  Kanaya tensed and inhaled sharply, but Sashimi only eyed her expectantly and, after just under a minute of nothing happening, withdrew the frond a few inches and flicked her with it.

            "Ow! What was that for?"  Sashimi gurgled in a way that somewhat resembled grumbling.  "Well, _I_ don't know what I'm supposed to do here.  Rose told me you would walk me through it better than she could."

            Sashimi blinked, slow and contemplative.  His tentacles swayed pensively.  Then, without warning, he let out a small, muffled shriek.

            Kanaya's muscles seized.  Panic overwhelmed her for just a moment, after which she promptly blacked out.

            The next thing she knew, she was sitting on the ground with Rose standing beside her, holding her hand and looking down at her in concern.  "What," Kanaya began, took a moment to wade through the bleariness of her mind in search of the precise wording for the question she was trying to ask, and finally settled on, "the Hell?"

            "I'm afraid that's how it goes," Rose said sympathetically.

            "'That' meaning what, exactly?  I don't remember anything!"

            "Which should make perfect sense if you will recall that the whole point of the exercise was for Sashimi to _eat_ your experience."

            Kanaya considered this.  "I'm not sure whether that makes it better or worse."

            "I've settled on 'better', personally.  It doesn't leave you as on edge as re-experiencing normally would, just a little bit... well, _drained_."

            Rose hauled her back onto her feet.  When she was steady, she took her hand back and brushed herself off, then turned to Sashimi and folded her arms.  "Well, are you happy now?" she asked him.

            Sashimi made a bubbly chirruping sound, draped a frond over her shoulder, and squeezed.

            "Look, Kanaya!" Rose said excitedly.  "I think he's trying to imitate the consoling gesture he observed me performing the last time he saw you get upset."

            "That's very sweet," said Kanaya, grimacing.  "Now stop it."  Sashimi did, and the way his eyelid drooped in response to her chastisement, he looked positively abashed.  For the first time, Kanaya had to admit to herself that he was, perhaps, just a little bit endearing.  She could certainly sympathize with painfully awkward failed attempts at expressing affection.  "I suppose he can't help what he is," she said to Rose.  "But my shoulder is a little bit sore now and could use an actual massage."

            "Then I will provide it with one," Rose said, taking her hand again to lead her toward the door.  "And you know, you really don't have to do this for the rest of the week."

            "I do know, but I will anyway.  Though it would be nice if I could also get massages for the duration."

            "Absolutely," said Rose, and Kanaya decided that this whole arrangement was, all in all, perfectly reasonable.

–

            "Are you sure he'll be all right?" Kanaya whispered.  The other inhabitants of the meteor were all asleep as she and Rose crept stealthily through the passages to its exterior — or, at least, as they moved with the best approximation of creeping stealthily that could be expected from two people carrying a squirming tentacle monster between them.

            "Yes, I've told you already:  we have met all of the conditions required for success in this endeavor."

            "Success being defined as..?"

            "Returning Sashimi safely to where he belongs."

            "Okay, but what happens after that?  Didn't you say that something was out there slaughtering horrorterrors?  And what if he were to get lost again?"

            "I'm afraid there comes a point at which all we can do is hope for the best — and, inconveniently enough, that is also the point at which the matter escapes the domain of my aspect and my ability to prognosticate upon it."

            Kanaya looked down into Sashimi's eye, which was rolling about excitedly as he attempted to take in as much of the meteor as possible on this one last, brief trip through.  The azure iris was really quite lovely, she thought.  Though, set as it was in a hideous mass of rubbery flesh and slime, its loveliness mostly served to create a deeply unsettling dissonance.  As she watched, the pit-like pupil ceased bouncing from side to side and moved towards the top of the head to gaze right back at her.  Upon achieving eye contact, Sashimi offered her a cacophonous but friendly little squawk.

            "Listen to how pleased with himself he sounds."  Kanaya sighed.  "Yes, fine, I do care a little," she told him.  "I would hate to think we'd wasted all that energy we poured into making you better."

            "Nothing was wasted," Rose assured her.  "We've given him a chance he wouldn't have had otherwise.  Now it's up to him what he does with that."

            When they reached the roof, Sashimi's wriggling turned to outright thrashing.  On Rose's nod, both girls let go, and in an instant he was above their heads, his tentacles propelling him through the void by some force unknown to Alternian or Earth physics.  One frond smacked Rose across the ear in his hasty ascent, but apparently not very hard, because when Kanaya looked to her in concern, she just rubbed at it a little and laughed.  Sashimi squawked elatedly and rocketed off into the darkness as fast as he could, not looking back once.

            "What a thankless little beast!" Kanaya exclaimed as she watched him go, but since she'd never expected any better from him, she wasn't all that bitter about it.  In fact, so characteristic was his horrid lack of manners that she couldn't help feeling a little bit fond.  There was also a rush of relief, which she had expected, and of pride, which she had not.  But then, she supposed she deserved it.  How many trolls in the history of Alternia had stitched up a creature of the Furthest Ring that had been bludgeoned half to death and seen it live to swim off again into the void?

            Rose took her hand, and they stood together until he had vanished from their view.  "Farewell, Sashimi," Rose whispered, and there was such earnestness in her voice that Kanaya could not help but giggle guiltily.

            "You see," she explained when Rose turned to shoot her a questioning glance, "the joke is and all this time has been that that there was an East Alternian delicacy comprised of finely sliced—"

            "Kanaya."  Rose squeezed her hand and looked as though she were trying very hard not to laugh at her.  "I _know_."

            "Oh," said Kanaya.


End file.
